Business Tech

Cassava Technologies, founded by Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon Strive Masiyiwa, has tapped Nvidia Corp. To build Africa’s first artificial intelligence factory.

Cassava will deploy Nvidia’s advanced computing and AI software at its data centres in South Africa by June 2025.

The same will then be done at its other facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria, according to a statement released on the company’s website.

Masiyiwa said the rollout of AI infrastructure is critical for Africa to fully take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution.

“Our AI factory provides the infrastructure for this innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, startups and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure to turn their bold ideas into real-world breakthroughs, and now they don’t have to look beyond Africa to get it,” he said.

Cassava aims to be the first to introduce accelerated computing to Africa as a Nvidia cloud partner.

Several firms, including Microsoft Corp. And G42, the United Arab Emirates’ top AI firm, expressed an interest last year in building a geothermal-powered data centre in Kenya for $1 billion as part of a multi-year plan to boost cloud-computing capacity in East Africa.